Hi Bev

Can you (or anyone else) point me at some credible examples of ROI.

I'm very close indeed to being able to put all my hard won knowledge
into practice - the developers can see the benefits, the product
managers can see the benefits, all I need to do now is convince the
bean counters and recruit a project champion and we should be
underway.

It shouldn't be that hard a sell
- we translate to many different languages
- we have similar products with content overlap
- we are looking to single-source paper, help, and web content
- we have remote writers and remote reviewers
- and previously created content is notorious for disappearing into
black holes of obscurity never to be found again.

One thing I'm trying to do is make it clear that it's not as simple as
buying the software and away we go - I'm not sure I'm succeeding in
this regard. My clients have gone from using a PDF file (without TOC
or hyperlinks) as online help six weeks ago to why are we bothering to
buy a HATT for the release in 2 weeks time when we're going to have a
CMS!

-Melanie Kendell

----- Original Message -----
From: Bev Corwin <bevcorwin@...>
Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2003 3:20 am
Subject: Re: [ia-cms-l] What do they do well - and what do they still need to do

> Dear IA-CMS,
>
> This is especially true when managing multilingual content. Such
> management can cut costs by as much as 60% if well integrated into a
> multilingual content environment.
>
> Bev
>
>> For example, being able to manage content as chunks (topics are
>> about the right level of granularity) as well as being able to
>> amalgamate those chunks into "documents" (which might be a
>> traditional paper-based document, online help system, website, or
>> whatever).
>
>> Conditional text within each chunk that gets included/excluded
>> depending on the "document" being created is also required to be
>> able to re-target a chunk for a different document (although this
>> should not be over-used or it becomes its own management nightmare).
>>
>> -Melanie Kendell